Pointless balcony planter photo of the day:

It's a very overedited cosmos, because I decided I liked it that way when I was playing with it. Something about what happened with the leaves, I guess.

I can be weird like that, if you haven't already noticed.

And if you haven't already guessed, I don't really have any blather today. It's partly because I'm still waiting to get a full night's sleep (a little better last night, but sheesh. Enough is enough, ok?), partly because I've been doing work things at work (oddly enough), and partly because I just didn't think of anything to post.

Hey, I do get points for honesty, right?

I suppose I could explain the working at work thing. Normally, since this is August, I wouldn't even be at work today. Over the summer months I switch to having Mondays and Tuesdays for my weekend so I can be here on Saturdays and Sundays for programming. However, you might notice that the end of this week isn't August anymore. That means I need to get back to being here on the weekdays so that I can be around for school programming as it comes up.

So... um... there you have it. I never said that it was going to be an exciting explanation, so I hope no one was expecting one.





Believe it or not, that's all I've got at the moment. Heck, I haven't even got a doodle for this week's Illustration Friday done yet, so I suppose my two fans should be happy that any words appeared here at all.

If you're into that sort of thing, that is. If you'd rather just go back to staring at the overedited picture, well... have at 'er, I guess. As for me, I'm going to stop typing this riiight... now.

Chapter 1413: Wherein Dee makes two very obvious observations

1. I am really getting tired of not sleeping.

2. HALLELUJAH IS NOT AN APPROPRIATE SONG FOR A FUNERAL. I don't care if Jack Layton chose the thing himself. When a song has been called, by one of its interpreters, a "hallelujah to the orgasm," it Should. Not. Be. Played. At. A Funeral. Ever.

And besides, Steven Page did a pretty channel-changingly-poor job of it. Or at least I think so. But then, I'm not exactly a fan.

Um, yeah. That's all I've got today. I need to get some work done before my plant walk.

Well, then

I seem to have left my nerdstick at home, so no pointless photo today.

I hope I left my nerdstick at home, because otherwise the world now has my nerdstick.

I'm pretty sure I left my nerdstick at home, because you'd think it would be hard for a person to miss an entire lanyard being ripped off of her neck, and since the nerdstick lives on the lanyard...

Now I'm going to worry about my nerdstick for a while, ok?




Ok.

No worries, by the way. Even if I've lost the thing, there wasn't much of importance on it. Just bugs me that I don't remember not putting it on, that's all. Stupid automatic morning habits that aren't so automatic anyway.

Lack of post of the day:

Yeah, I can already tell that I'm not into it today. I apparently slept crooked and have the headache to prove it. I've also spent the morning looking at Illustration Friday entries and listening to 70s rock (70s today, yes. I know I'm more usually 60s, but I guess I felt like going with my own childhood today instead of someone else's), and the usual no-thought-for-the-blog has happened as a result. On top of that, I'm getting kind of annoyed with whatever Google glitch is making the blogs load either really slowly or incompletely these past few days. I think it must be a Google thing, because my iGoogle page is wonky as well. If you're having a problem seeing this blog because of loading problems, it seems like stopping it and then reloading helps. I need to change my already slow-loading template anyway, so maybe this will be the kick in the butt to get me to do something about it in the next week or two.

So, there we are. Not exactly blogging mood. I do, however, have a spider for you (as you can see in today's pointless photo). This is big news, because with all the wet (and all the mosquitoes in the non-wet) this year it's been awful for someone who makes a hobby out of trying to hunt down spiders with an autofocus camera. They're all hiding, you see. I had a bit of luck yesterday, though, and found this beauty as I was shooting rose hips.

With the camera, of course.

It's pretty much my first spider of the summer, isn't it? Sad, that. Hopefully we'll have enough of an autumn that I can get a few pictures then.

To go back to being annoyed, unfortunately I have very little idea of what kind of spider it is. It stayed on the side view and refused to give me a better look than what you see here. For a compulsive cataloguer like me that's a hard thing to deal with. Finally, a spider... BUT I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS.




And that last part needed to be in caps not only because I was annoyed at the spider, but because since I typed the part before it I've had to reboot the computer because of a program stall. This day is just out to annoy me, isn't it?

Ah well. I suppose I'd better post this thing before something else happens to annoy me even further. It ought to be a reeeeeally good drive back to my place after lunch...

Chapter 1410: Wherein Dee wastes an entire morning

Well, maybe not an entire morning. I have been doing the laundry. Or at least I've been loading the machine so that it can do the laundry.

Hmmm. This is already on it's way to getting silly, so before that happens I'd like to put on my serious face and say that I was sorry to hear that Jack Layton died this morning. Whether or not you agreed with the man's politics, you just had to admire his drive, his spirit, his passion, and his accomplishments.

----------

Ok, back to silly. Or back to nothing, more likely, since I've spent most of the non-laundry portion of the morning looking at random things on the internet and it's meant that I haven't bother to come up with anything for the blog. Heck, I haven't even opened up my drawing stuff (which is currently sitting all accusatory-looking on top of the scanner), so I don't have anything for the other blog either. Sad, that. I'd been doing not too badly lately at being blathery. Sometimes even with a topic, you'll notice.

Streak broken, I guess. As I've said before, sometimes when I haven't got much I can come up with something just by typing for a bit, but I can already feel that it's not going to happen today. So... um... Oh, I know:

This is my current favourite thing on the internet. Don't worry -- I'll get over it soon. For now, though, it makes me laugh.

Maybe I should look for something else that makes me laugh, since I haven't done a pointless sketch comedy link for a while. Ok, give me a bit...

You know, I was about to link to some Wayne and Shuster, but I'm almost afraid to watch them. I grew up loving their stuff; what if it doesn't wear well and I'm disappointed? Ah well, in for a penny. I should explain for those unfamiliar with Canadian parliament that "desk thumping" is the traditional way to show approval for something rather than applause. Oh, and if you know that this sketch came out back when they were first considering putting cameras in the House of Commons it makes more sense, especially since the first part of the sketch is cut off in the video. The concept was about how to make people actually watch something as boring as Question Period. Incidentally, the main reason I'm posting this particular sketch is that the chorus has stuck in my head since I was a kid. No, really. To this day I'll sing it in my head when politicians are saying the usual stupid stuff in the Commons.

I should end with something a little less specifically Canadian, I suppose. All right, back to the vault one more time, and then I need to go find some lunch. Ok. This'll do. Apparently I'm in the mood for Canadian comedy earworms today. Think of it this way, I suppose: at least I managed to get almost a post out of this nonsense.

Later, all.

Pointless salamander photo of the day:

This really should have been put with Friday's post, but I didn't realise I'd be blathering about the salamanders as much as I did. I did, though, so just for your edification and enlightenment (or if you were maybe interested at all?) here's a quick shot of the workplace salamanders. From the bottom to the top, that's Boris, Natasha, and Fluffy Spirit. And if they look like they're on some kind of secret salamander mission in the photo, that's only because I threw some crickets in there a little before I took the picture. Eating crickets is about the only kind of mission that Tiger Salamanders have. Well, that and burrowing.

Have I ever told you how much I hate crickets? Oh, I'm sure I have, and I'm sure you can find multiple iterations of what I'm about to say if you use the blog's search box. For now, then, the short version. I hate crickets. I was insect-phobic as a child (that'd make me an entomophobe, for those of my two fans who are into latinate labels), and while I grew out of -- or convinced myself out of -- much of that, crickets and I have no love lost. They stink, they're stupid, and when we first started using crickets for feeding (a few years back, when we had a couple of elderly toads. But that's another story) I could barely bring myself to touch them.

Not a big deal now, since I do it at least once a week, but I still don't particularly like crickets.

For those who are into the herptile thing at all, we use four-week crickets for feeding even though the salamanders could easily handle five-week and five-week would probably save us money, all things considered. There's one very simple reason for that: four-week crickets don't tend to sing, but five-week ones definitely do. Add chirping to the list of things I don't like about crickets, is what I'm saying. Oh sure, you might think it's pleasant to hear a single cricket going at it on a hot summer evening, but when you're buying crickets by the fifties or hundreds and they're in an office, the sound is NOT SOOTHING.

I... hate crickets.

But I'm ok with the salamanders, even if they're not much brighter than the crickets.

I guess I'd better be ok with salamanders, since our last garter snake kicked off this week and it'll probably be a while until we get ourselves another one.






My workplace is a bit different from yours, I'd bet...

Pet names

Further to yesterday's post: today? Watermelon! Yay melon.

Anyway. Before I start the blather I should say that in a vain attempt to make the usual pointless photo slightly less pointless, I'm posting an old shot from the DSi because I didn't have any more recent pictures of the pets on hand. DSi photography. Now there's quality in action, folks.

And now, pet names. It hasn't exactly recently come to my attention that I'm a little bit different with pet names. I've had a hand in naming a fair number of pets over the years, and while I can't say that the names I choose are terribly original or unusual, that fact that I tend not to use those names after the pet's already been given them probably is.

I have pet names for my pets' names, you see.

Take the cat ball above. That's Penny. I came up with the name Penny even though she was technically my parents' cat, because as we were trying to figure out a name for the new kitten it occurred to me that her eyes were very copper-coloured. Thus, Penny. Her eyes greened up a bit as she got older (so I guess now she's a slightly corroded Penny), but still. Penny's a perfectly fine name for a cat.

So I, of course, call her Lumpy now.

And why Lumpy? Well, it started when she was little and used to get weird swollen lumps on the inside of her lower lip. The vet said she might get them all her life -- she ended up growing out of them, though -- and the odd look it gave her face started me in the habit of calling her Lumpy. But why still Lumpy if she's not anymore? Oh, there are plenty of lumpy things about her to help the name stick. Anyone who's had a long-haired cat knows that you occasionally have to deal with litter box lumps, for example. Also, as the picture helpfully shows, she's pretty good at being a lump generally.

Yep. She's lump.

And, erm, sorry for the earworm if you followed that link.

Lumpy, naturally, isn't the only animal I've rechristened. Once you get in the habit you don't just get out of it. Max, who's often featured here for being the world's neediest cat, is often Smack. Sometimes he's much worse things, and sometimes he probably thinks that Max is his middle name because his first name must be Jesus...

Um. Yeah.

Dogs, by the way, are generally Dogbreath. It works for pretty much every dog, I figure.

Here at work the animals fare a little better from me, but only because I'm sharing the names with the public. Our recently departed garter snakes were Lost and Found, courtesy of Wheat's wife (I always kind of liked that), and since I get a kick out of the fact that few people younger than me would recognise our salamanders Boris and Natasha as a reference to Rocky and Bullwinkle (and yes, I was the one who named Boris and Natasha), I don't have nicknames for them. I did, however, laugh when one of our younger staffers tried to explain the names as "I dunno. It's from some cartoon or something."

We do have one other, younger salamander here, though. Since it didn't seem fair to have a Rocky without a Bullwinkle (or vice versa) I decided to abandon the theme and let our preschool kids name the new guy. Or girl.

They called it Spirit.

Um. Have I mentioned that I don't do well with cute or sweet pet names? That one's borderline for me. I'll use it around the general public, but for the rest of the time the salamander is Fluffy, as far as I'm concerned.


Oh, come on. How could you not name a salamander Fluffy?







Ok, maybe it's just me, then. But at least I didn't name him Lump, right?

Melon head

As I sit here at my desk I'm looking at an empty plate that used to have fruit on it. I would have taken a picture, but then I didn't figure you'd be very thrilled about an empty plate that used to have fruit on it, so I decided to just post a hollyhock instead.

I like hollyhocks. I kind of have a thing for cottage-gardeny flowers. Blame my paternal grandmother, I guess.

Anyway.

Oooo. Kind of early for an anyway. Especially after a few days of non-blogging. I could have blogged yesterday, I suppose, but the lack of brain would have been visible even through a computer screen, I suspect.

Anyway. About the fruit plate. Or the non-fruit plate, as it is now.

It's not unusual for staff here to occasionally bring in baking, whether it's home baked or just from a quick trip to the Canadian institution of Tim Horton's. Today, though, one of the girls brought in some fruit instead. Blueberries, pineapple, mango, melon...

MELON!

I am such a melon head.

I'm not sure why, but I am. It doesn't really matter what kind of melon, either. Today it was cantaloupe (or musk melon, which is what our version of cantaloupe really is. My understanding is that the word refers to a different animal in Europe. Or, erm, melon), but I'm good for honeydew, watermelon... heck, I'm good to try pretty much any melon once. I really like melon, is what I'm saying.

And if someone offers me melon already cut up into convenient melony pieces? I'm a five-year-old.

A happy five-year-old.

Maybe it has something to do with my whole cooking-for-one lifestyle, but if someone offers me fruit that I haven't had to fuss over and then wonder about what to do with the leftovers, I'm all in. Let's face it: melon for one person can be a slightly tricky thing, unless you're willing to pay the extra for those pre-made fruit cups in the produce section. And then there's the whole not knowing what condition the fruit was in before it was selected to be a pre-made fruit cup. I'm pretty sure that what you find in most of those things wasn't pretty in the first place.

As a result, any fruit bigger than, say, an apple can be a little difficult for a single melon head.

Which is why, I figure, that on the rare occasions that I go out to breakfast with someone, I'm all about the fruit plate. Nicely presented fruit, with maybe a little cottage cheese or yoghurt and plenty of melon? Ohhh yeah. So much better than the thought of pancakes or greasy breakfast sausage. Who would go that heavy first thing in the morning when they could have melon?




Well, ok, a lot of people. Which is fine.

Leaves more melon for me...







Please note that the above post title did not refer to anything mentioned here or pictured here or anything made by the company here. Although I do like lemons. Maybe enough to make that a pointless post. You know, at some point.

Pointless photo of the day:

See, the problem with posting at work is that when I'm actually working at work I don't really have the time to think of anything to post.

Anything that's not work-related, anyway. And since you got one of those yesterday, I think I'll give it a miss today. Just take it as a given that there are still mosquitoes out there, and that coots have interesting feet.

It seems like you can also take it as a given that this time of year this part of Alberta will be under a daily severe storm watch, which we are. Kind of sucks because I'm supposed to be leading a plant walk in about an hour and a half, but maybe things will hold off until the evening so that I don't have to worry about hustling a bunch of people back to the building to avoid getting them electrocuted or hailed on.

We've had a bit of hail this summer, as today's photo of a slightly dented apple will show you.

See? There was even a tie-in with my almost-topic. Yay me. Except that it does make the pointless photo slightly less pointless, doesn't it? Ah well. We all miss the mark now and then.

See you in a day or two, probably.

I feel drippy

TMI? Sorry about that.

I'm allowed to feel drippy, though. I've just been out on the trails for an hour or so, it's a hot day, and I'm wearing a brown uniform t-shirt and jeans.

Drippy indeed.

It's not that bad of a drippy, though. A good day to be out on the trails, if a person can put up with the mosquitoes.

It's one of the weirder parts of my job that if I feel like going out for a walk, I go out for a walk. Now, admittedly there was a method to it today (I'm leading a walk tomorrow and was doing a bit of planning for it), but even when there's no reason we're encouraged to go out, check the state of the trails, talk to the visitors, and I suppose just generally be a presence out there. We probably don't do it often enough, but we're meant to.

Not your normal workplace, no.

I guess I've been reflecting on it a bit more than I usually do lately, because the end of September marks somewhat of a milestone for Yours Blatheringly. Yep, as of September 30th I will have been here for twenty years.






Sigh. I'm not old enough to have been anywhere for twenty years, if you ask me.

I've spent twenty years as a professional naturalist, and I'm still not entirely sure how it happened. I mean, obviously I interviewed and was hired; I do know that part. What I don't really understand is how I got here and why I've stayed at it so long. I like it, guess. And it would be pretty hard at this point to move on to a nine-to-five office job where a person does the same thing every single day. I'm not sure I'd last long at something like that. At the very least you could say that this place is rarely if ever boring, and that's always a good thing for those of us of the short attention span brigade.

I've hit the point in my accidental profession where a certain amount of mentoring is expected, and that's where I run into trouble. Suppose I went to some school's career fair and the kids asked me how to become a naturalist, for example. Should I tell them the way I did it -- that I was the nerdy kid who always had to take field guides on nature walks so I could know what I was seeing? That I went to university pretty much just to go to university (not exactly a luxury most people can afford nowadays, sadly)? That when I was done my undergrad degree I didn't see any research opportunities that grabbed me, and had half a mind to take my environmental assessment ticket but never bothered because the oil patch tanked right about that time and there wouldn't have been jobs? That I sent my resume to just about anyone I could think of and ended up being hired here almost more for my three summers of working at a small-town museum than for my freshly-minted Zoology degree?

Doesn't sound like sound career planning strategy to me, somehow.

Yeah, I fell into this job, and I've stayed here.

That's ok, though. The job's changed somewhat over the years, and I'm still learning things. Maybe that's the big reason behind everything, in the end. I'm still learning. I'm not bored. Sometimes I get the chance to share my knowledge with other enthusiastic people, and sometimes I pick up things from them. And the job is never really routine, which has to be a good thing, right? It's kept me here for twenty years, at any rate.






And if I feel like it I can go out for a walk.

Definitely a good thing.

Oh, deer

It occurred to me after I took this photo that the sunflower looks a bit like it's depressed to be in jail. It's not, though. That's just the end of the pea fence.

Not that it's worth having a pea fence in my father's garden this year, which makes me sad. I'm a huge fan of fresh peas (as my two fans will remember from previous years' pointless photos of empty pods), but there isn't going to be much of a harvest this year. And why? Well, I could say that the late spring made seeding so late that there isn't going to be much of a harvest of anything, but that's not true. The peas came up as they always do, and the deer population was very happy about that.



Yep. That wasn't a typo in the title.

My father lives towards the outskirts of town, and especially since there are a few vacant, wooded lots in the area there was always at least a bit of wildlife in the area.

There's more now, though.

A few years ago a developer bought what we grew up calling the hatchery (it was really a pulletting operation, but whatever. There were chickens, and it was stinky on a hot day) and started building a new subdivision up there. Which he kept the name Chicken in. Fine for those of us who have been around long enough to know the history, but if you were new to town would you really want a house in a place called Chicken *something*?

Or maybe it's just me that thinks that. Remember, though, that I'm the one who grew up with hot summer days of chicken barns airing out.

Be that as it may (hey, it's a change from anyway).

The creation of the subdivision meant the tearing down of the chicken barns. It also meant the clearing of the brush on the side of the property away from the chicken barns.

Which meant?

Oh, deer.

Displaced deer, that is. Now, don't worry about them too much because there are loads of good deery places in the neighbourhood. The problem is, though, that the year of the clearing of the old home was also the year that the deer discovered that their neighbours have gardens. The deer problems went from being occasional to constant.

For the most part, that doesn't bother me. I like gardens, but I also like deer. I can generally handle both at the same time. My feeling is that you either learn to share, or you look up plants that deer don't care for and plant those instead. Think daffodils instead of tulips, for example (although I have to admit that I heave a sigh for the tulips every year. They're still trying sooo hard to flower...). There are a couple of exceptions to this resignation, however, and oddly enough they're both featured in today's NOT POINTLESS photo (oh nooooooo. Now the blog will turn into a pumpkin).

Hey, deer. Why all of a sudden have you decided to go after the peas and the sunflowers?

See, the thing is that they normally don't bother either of those plants much. Sure, the occasional young sunflower will be clipped off, but the peas are usually ignored because it's not worth the bother to unentwine them from the fence. This year, though, apparently the deer menu specified young pea greens before they even had a chance to reach the fence, and sunflower tops. The sunflower you see in the picture is one of only about four that's even going to get a chance to flower.

Really? Was that necessary?






Ahhhhh well. I guess I can't change my philosophy for the sake of a few sunflowers, can I?










The peas, though...

Follow, follow

A warning about today's post: I'm trying out something in Blogger in Draft for fun today. It may lead to even more nonsense than usual if I'm not paying enough attention, though. Not that my two fans would likely notice amongst the nonsense that's usually here, but I thought I'd mention it all the same.

Another warning, this time about today's pointless photo: this is my favourite type of daylily that's found in my father's yard ( I say this every year, for those new to the program), and as a result you'll probably be seeing a fair amount of them in the next few days.

Oh heavens. For anyone out there using Blogger, go to the Blogger in Draft posting page and try Scribe ( the last button -- the pencil). The whole autocomplete thing is an odd, odd feeling while blogging. Wouldn't be strange on a phone, but here? And I'm getting a kick out of the suggested phrases with the multiple option. I have a weird sense of humour that way, though. But it's even suggesting things with Canadian spelling...

Anyway. That's not why we're all here today. Or at least not why I am. Oh, and after last night's weirdfest brought on by delay of posting, I hope everyone appreciates that I'm posting now. That is, posting before I get distracted by things other than autocompletion.

Um, what? You say that I'm already well on my way?  Well, let me prove you wrong by actually making it to the topic at hand.

Autocomplete knew that I was going to say topic at hand, by the way.

I have a question for those of you who use internet following in its various forms. I'm including following like we have here on the blogs through Friend Connect, and following people on things like Twitter, friending on things like Facebook ( not that I'd know much about that, still being a stubborn Facebook holdout)... and what the heck. Let's include RSS feeds, even though they're not really in the same category since the people whose feeds you've subscribed to don't generally know that you've done it. For those of you who follow, why do you do it and what do you do with it afterwards?

Here's what I mean. I have two different forms of following in my life at the moment. At work we follow a fair number of people on Twitter. Too many, I sometimes think, but that's what you get when you have several people using the same account.  Some of the feeds we follow for information or news, some we follow because it's local personalities that we like, and some, frankly, we follow because it looks good. It could be professional organisations, or people we followed just because they're following us. That sort of thing. Honestly? I have some of those feeds muted on the reader I personally use. Does standard Twitter have that feature, anyone? It comes in handy. It means that if you don't feel like reading someone's tweets for a while you can just not see them as opposed to completely unfollowing them.

For myself on my own time, though, I follow in a different way. I follow only the people I want to follow. I follow a few people on Twitter, yes (I do have an account, but I don't tweet myself. I just use it for following), and I follow an awful lot of blogs.

Here's the second part of the question, then. I'll reiterate it for those who might have forgotten. Once you follow, what do you do with it afterwards? Do you follow just so that people can add to their list of followers, or do you actually read the feeds you follow?

Personally, I do. If you see deeol (or deeolworld, depending on which service we're talking about) on your list of followers, that means that I'm really checking up on what you're doing. It means that I was genuinely interested when I hit that follow button.

Of course, it also means that if I become uninterested I'm not shy about hitting the unfollow.

By the way, don't you think that the grammar grannies amongst our ancestors would shudder at the word unfollow?

----------

Some time later...

Well, an unexpected computer restart has officially put me off my rhythm, such as it was. Inasmuch as I had a point coming in the blather, I suppose it had something to do with wondering whether the followers I have on my two blogs are actually followers or people who just happened by one day and figured they'd give me another name on the list as a way of saying Good Job! Either way's ok, really. It just makes me curious.

Oh, and for anyone out there that I'm following: I've been noticing that one of the unfortunate things with me and following is that if I'm following you I have even less of a tendency to comment than I normally would because I figure that you already know that I'm following you. Yes, I know that it's completely weird. And yes, now that I've noticed I think I'll try to do a bit more to change that. But if by chance you are following me and I'm following you, well.... hi. Maybe we should have coffee sometime. Or tea for me, since I don't do coffee...





I think I should probably end this post now, don't you? Yeah, I figured. Later, all.

Chapter 1402: Wherein Dee realises that she hasn't blogged yet today

My two fans will remember that evening blogging never goes all that well for me (not that blogging in general has been happening anyway lately... but I digress). It's kind of like I have this mental period for blogging -- let's say two hours either side of noon -- and if that period's over then that's it until the next day.

That's right folks. I'm like the NASA launch window of the blog world. Erm... NASA does still launch things even though the shuttle program's done, right? Yeah, I was pretty sure that they did.

Anyway, as she always says when she's trying to come up with a thought (c'mon, thought. Any thought will do). I didn't blog in my usual blog window today because I was far too busy doing...

Um...

What was I doing, exactly? I think I'm going to have to take this in point form:

• Eating store-bought banana bread (it was what was on hand) for breakfast while catching up on some e-mails and other internet things that I'd missed over the past week.
• Moving on to today's internet nonsense once that was all cleared up.
• Doodling a pumpkin flower for Illustration Friday (Yes, I know that it's Monday. They give you an entire week, you know).
• Complaining to my father while waiting for each layer to dry that I don't know how to paint.
• Singing. That, erm, happens generally, but it happens even more when I'm doodling because I usually have music on while I do it.
• Making a bad scan of said flower and posting it to the other blog and IF. Which... well, see the other blog if you're at all interested. And hey! I did post already today! Just not here, was all.
• Having lunch. No banana bread that time.
• Braving the mosquitoes in the yard to take some new pointless photos, since the stash on my nerdstick was getting pretty low.
• Editing the photos.
• Editing the snot out of the poorer photos (ahem. See example above) because I found it amusing to pretend that I was a digital artist.
• Singing.
• Helping with dinner (banana breadless).
• Eating dinner.
• Digesting dinner.
• Telling my father that I should probably blog, and mentioning that my last blog post was about pear-scented underarms.

And now? Typing nonsense. And singing. And, occasionally, chair dancing -- but only if it's a really good song. Hard to type and chair dance at the same time.

Why all the singing? Because I like it, obviously. And for whatever reason, I like to have something to sing to while I'm doodling. Habit, I suppose. It's usually 60s or 70s stuff because that's what I grew up with (I'd say I'm dating myself, but dating yourself is always such a messy affair) and I know most of the words. It's harder to sing along when I don't know the words, but given this family's habit for substituting other words in songs that we do know, you can imagine that I'll fake my way through almost anything as long as no one's there to notice that I haven't got a clue what I'm on about.

Kind of like now, I guess.

Where the heck was I, again? Oh, right. Nattering about staying busy all day without actually doing anything. A true talent, I'm sure you'll agree. And regular fans will notice the glaring omission of doing the laundry. It would have been too much to add to the schedule, don't you think?

Besides, I did it last night. It's fairly humid here (for here. Those of you who live in actual humidity would probably think that this is a parched desert), and I wanted to give my hangables a fair chance to dry before taking the last bit of dampness out with the dryer tomorrow. They're hanging here in the basement, you see. There have been far too many storms lately to bother hanging them outside.

Not that I generally hang things outside in the best of weather, but it makes a good excuse. Never mind that I'm a drip-dry-in-the-spare-room sort of girl. That just sounds weird.




As does this post. Is it weird enough and long enough to be done yet? Hands up? Oh, wait. My house my rules, right? Well, then I vote that we're done.








Me 'n allllllll the voices...

I have an idea!

I have an idea that I'm a little tired of wet things, but that's not what I was meaning to post about.

Actually, it takes a lot to make me REALLY tired of wet things. I come from a fairly dry place, all things considered, and I guess because of that I'm pretty fond of rain. Another topic for another time, though.

The idea that I really had in mind was more about where some "good" ideas ever come from. Some of the ideas out there kind of boggle me.

Example? Well, this morning when I was putting on my antiperspirant I couldn't help but wonder who it was that decided it would be a good idea for a woman's armpit to smell like pear. I mean, I like pear (obviously, or I wouldn't have bought that scent) and the perfume they used for this particular product is pleasantly pear-y, but it isn't the most obvious smell for an armpit.

Of course, the most obvious smell for an armpit is the one a person's trying to avoid by using antiperspirant in the first place, but apparently modern society isn't terribly accepting of that. Still... pear? Or cucumber, which has also graced my pits at various times?

I should say here that I have a tendency to aim towards identifiable scents for personal products because at least I know what they should smell like, as opposed to the nebulosity of things like Summer Day or Fresh Breeze or Evening Shower. Things like that make me think that someone just had the idea to cover up the fact that they had no idea what scent they'd just created by giving it a vaguely pleasant name. It's like calling a sports drink Blue because they're not really sure what the flavour is but they know they've got a lot of blue food colouring on hand.

Speaking of which...

Blue raspberry. Who on earth decided that was a good idea? Raspberries are red, raspberry juice is red, and anyone who knows what a raspberry is will be much more likely to identify its flavour with the colour red than blue. Still, go down the juice aisle and you'll find multiple variations on the blue raspberry theme. Especially juices that are aimed at the kid market. One would think that a child who likes raspberry would want it to be red and that any other colour would have as much success as those purple and green novelty ketchups they introduced a few years back (don't believe me on that one? Well, according to this article it was back in December 2000, so I wouldn't blame you if you don't remember that particular short-lived fad), but it seems that bluing raspberry isn't as morally troubling as greening ketchup.

Anyway. Before anyone says anything I do, of course, realise that companies spend big bucks just to find the things that might make us buy their products. So I guess the question is: why do we think it would be a great idea for armpits to smell like pear or raspberries to be blue?

And really? As to that... I'm sure I have no idea.

A day or two later... five days later...

It's the same, right?

Yeah, I... had some stuff going on. Honestly, I think that's all I really want to say because the rest will sound like whinging.

For now, though...

Hmm. Well, I'll just say a big not-to-worry because the things that haven't already worked themselves out will be doing that in the next little while.

I'm assuming, anyway.

And what else?

Erm... how about that harvestman in the photo, eh? The fact is, it's been a wet spring and summer. That's fantastic for the mosquitoes, but not so great for someone whose hobby is taking pictures of non-mosquito invertebrates. I'm having trouble finding my usual spiders and such, and when I actually do the mosquitoes are bad enough that I haven't been hanging around to take any pictures.

That's my excuse of the moment, anyway.

And with that... do we need more ellipses in this post... with that, I'll say that I'll try to have a wordier post tomorrow.




Will that do, do you think?